President Donald Trump’s decision last week to impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum—25 percent and 10 percent, respectively—rivals in sheer unpopularity the president’s early-2017 travel ban. Many of this nation’s chief trading partners lobbied against the tariffs—Canada, South Korea, Japan, the European Union—and a sizeable number of the president’s own party expressed their opposition to the president’s economic nationalism. Democrats are either openly opposed to or quietly apprehensive about the new tariffs.
So unpopular are these trade levies that the administration, under intense pressure throughout last week, chose to offer exemptions for certain friendly nations. The measure was always aimed at China, and indeed the evidence that China has perpetrated trade warfare against the United States is overwhelming, so it’s probably good news that the tariffs won’t pummel our closest allies. Still, the prospect of offering exemptions opens the whole process to ethically suspect bargaining and insider deal-making. So while we’re glad, in a sense, that Canada, Mexico, and Australia will likely obtain exemptions from the steel and aluminum tariffs, the policy of exempting certain nations for certain not-entirely-transparent reasons will surely lend itself to graft and fraud at very high levels.
THE WEEKLY STANDARD favors free trade for both economic and ethical reasons, and we are for that reason forthrightly opposed to these tariffs.
Even so, it’s a bit rich to hear both Democrat and Republican lawmakers exhibit their angst about the president’s trade-war adventurism as though there’s nothing they can do about it. In fact, there’s plenty they can do about it. The president’s authority to impose these tariffs is not constitutional but statutory. The Tariff Act of 1930, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, and Trade Act of 1974 all give the present wide authority to impose tariffs on specific products and nations. The administration based its latest round of tariffs specifically on the 1962 act, arguing that the law “authorizes the present to adjust the imports of an article and its derivatives that are being imported into the United States in such quantities or under such circumstances as to threaten to impair [U.S.] national security.”
There may be excellent reasons to impose penalties on hostile nations for reasons of national security, but levying our allies’ imports is no way to do it. Congressional leaders know this. And since they know it, it’s their duty at least to debate curtailing the president’s authority. A simple provision requiring Congressional approval is all it would take to stop the administration from punishing and antagonizing our allies in the simpleminded belief that doing so will protect U.S. industries.
Amending these provisions couldn’t be done with a simple majority. But that just means Republicans will have to solicit the minority party’s support, and there are easily enough Democratic free-traders to make the effort viable. Add a few Democrats who’d be willing to go along just to damage the president, and Congress just might be able to save the nation’s economy from its misguided protectors.
Unless, of course, Congressional leaders don’t mean what they say.
